Lucille+Smith

A typical Chicago abortion death in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was perpetrated by a physician or midwife at the practitioner's office. The woman would take ill and her family would bring her to a hospital, where she would die after naming the guilty party. Such was the abortion that killed 24-year-old Lucille Smith on March 6, 1928.

 Lucille, a store clerk and homemaker, died at Chicago's Burrows Hospital from complications of an abortion performed that day at the office of 68-year-old midwife Emma Schulz. Schulz was indicted for felony murder on April 1, 1929.

The following year, Schulz was arrested after the death of 23-year-old Gladys Schaffer.

Keep in mind that things that things we take for granted, like antibiotics and blood banks, were still in the future. For more about abortion in this era, see [|Abortion in the 1920s].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * [|Homicide in Chicago Interactive]
 * "Recommends Murder Charge," //Chicago Daily Tribune//, Apr. 18, 1928

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